Anchor
by brookemopolitan
Summary: For the first time since they became a "thing", Steve gets called away to Avenge. Darcy panics, and latches onto something of his. Cross posted at A03


**This is my first time posting in this fandom. Please be gentle**

* * *

The greatest cinematic reveal of all time was punctuated by the shrill beeping of the Stark-phone that Steve still didn't really know how to use.

Darcy reached for the remote, hitting pause before it could be revealed that Darth Vader was Luke's father. "Avengers assemble?" she asked, stomach twisting uncomfortably.

Steve pressed a kiss to her temple. "Wheels up in thirty minutes," he replied. "Sorry about the movie, Doll."

"Don't worry about it," Darcy replied, a bravado echoing over her words that she didn't truly feel. "It'll keep. Go out. Kick ass, take names."

Pressing another kiss to her forehead, Steve stowed his phone into his pocket and strode out of his apartment to meet the rest of the team for briefing.

Darcy stared at the doorframe long after Steve had taken his marching orders. She didn't know why she felt like she'd been kicked in the chest.

It had all begun when Jane and Darcy had shipped out of London and into Avengers Tower. Tony Stark had offered Jane a kickass position that she couldn't turn down. Darcy had tagged along and was appointed as the liaison officer between Stark Industries and S.H.I.E.L.D, and spent most of her days supervising the SCIENCE that happened in the R&D department at Stark Industries (which, loosely interpreted, meant that she made sure that Jane, Tony and Bruce left the lab with the exact amount of fingers they'd entered with) and gleefully writing correspondence to NASA that told them to go fuck themselves, because they sure as hell weren't getting their hands on Jane's research now that she'd proven herself to be right, with the muscly space god to prove it.

A few days later, Steve Rogers had arrived. He was dark and broody in all the ways that Darcy's political science degree had not prepared her for (she'd written a paper on his role as a propaganda figure in World War II, for crying out loud) and he was way too gorgeous to be real.

She'd damn near fallen over when he made a Casablanca reference in passing conversation and from there, she'd taken it upon herself to catch the Cap' up on seventy odd years of popular culture. Her crush had gone from "living, breathing historical icon" to "living, breathing, amazingly decent guy who was probably, definitely way too good for her" when he'd walked her back to her room (two floors below his in the Tower) the night that she'd introduced him to the cinematic genius of Alfred Hitchcock's _Rear Window_. She didn't kiss him that night, even though she really, _really_ wanted to. Instead, Darcy simply continued the façade of "oh, we're just friends." She never, ever got flustered around Steve and all his bicep-y, All-American good looks and charm, and by no means did her face flush bright red whenever he was near.

She was doing perfectly well at decidedly _not _kissing the face off Steve Rogers whenever he was near her until the night that they watched _To Kill A Mockingbird._ When he'd remarked that the world needed more men like Atticus Finch, the urge was just too strong. Throwing all caution into the wind, she pressed her lips against his.

To her eternal delight, he'd kissed her back.

In fact, he'd taken great delight in kissing her ever since. They were in their new couple bubble of bliss, and it had been abruptly popped with a pressing need for the world to be saved.

Intellectually, she'd known what she'd signed for when she'd finally stopped resisting the temptation to kiss him stupid. She knew what the life of an Avenger was like, constantly running off to kick ass and take names in the name of truth, justice and the American way (Steve hated when she quoted that other patriotic hero. She responded by wearing a blue singlet with a giant S on it, daring him to go ahead and make her stop wearing it. He did). She'd also seen first hand what it was like to be the other half of a couple when you dated an Avenger. She'd seen the way that Pepper and Jane glued themselves to the TV screen when their respective super charged other halves were off saving the world. She could hear her Women's Studies professor whispering in her ear about how patriarchal and anti-feminist it was, the women sitting and weeping as the men went away to fight. Darcy would have loved to introduce said professor to Natasha Romanoff.

Darcy checked her watch. She still had time. Shrugging on the robe that Steve had left draped on the back of his couch, Darcy made her way towards the elevator, instructing Jarvis to take her to Jane's suite.

* * *

The landing pad at the top of the building was _freezing_, and Jane and Darcy linked arms and huddled together for warmth while they waited. This was Jane's ritual. To stand and wait and say goodbye to Thor before he disappeared off to defend Midgard, reminding him each time that if he ever disappeared for two years without a word again, she'd let Darcy loose on him with her Taser.

It was a ritual Darcy could see herself joining.

The elevator opened. With the exception of a decidedly not-green Bruce Banner, there they were… Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Darcy was frozen to the spot. She couldn't identify the feeling swirling through her, pushing a lump into her throat as she saw Steve gussied up in his Suit, cowl absent so she could still see his face.

He stepped over to her, his gloved hand cupping her cheek. "You didn't have to come up here," he murmured to her. "I know how much you hate the cold."

She shot him what she hoped was a charming smile. "I thought this is what broads back in your day did," she responded. "Stood at the wharf and waved and cried as their heroes went off to war?"

"You're not a broad from back in my day," Steve pointed out, fingers curling in the collar of the robe she wore.

That was their relationship in a nutshell… blending Steve's old world sensibilities with Darcy's third wave feminist political leanings. They made absolutely no sense on paper; which was what made them make the most sense of all. They'd tossed away the rulebook and did whatever the hell they pleased, when it pleased them. "I'm not," Darcy agreed. She rose on her ugg boot covered tiptoes, pressing a kiss on the corner of his mouth. "So don't expect me to cry for you, Soldier."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

He kissed her long and slow, just like Clark Gable in the old movies Darcy liked so much.

"Come back in exactly the same amount of pieces you left in," Darcy whispered fiercely, her tiny hands gripping his shoulders so tightly her knuckles turned white. "Otherwise I'll find every tiny bit of you so I can stitch you back together and kick your ass."

"Yes ma'am." He squeezed her tightly, pressed a kiss on her cheekbone and then he was off, the helicopter thundering as it disappeared into the New York City skyline.

It was just the wind, she told herself… nothing but the cold air forcing an automatic response in her body…

"Are you crying?"

"Shut up, Jane."

* * *

The only time Darcy had looked away from the news was when she focussed her attention on her laptop, frantically researching the delicate political situations of several Central Asian nations that the Avengers had been plunked into as they worked with the Fantastic Four to thwart Dr Von Doom's latest evil plot that centred heavily around nuclear weaponry and what appeared to be child trafficking. Charming.

Pepper was in Florida on business and Jane had been banned from SCIENCE-ing until Bruce and Tony returned, so they both sat quietly in Jane's apartment, eyes fixed on the news, cringing as they saw footage of a city in turmoil.

The news went to an ad break. Darcy cleared her throat, fiddling with the sleeve of Steve's robe. "Does it get any easier?" she asked.

Jane turned to look at her, eyes slightly bloodshot from lack of sleep. "I wish I could say yes," she replied. "Especially because well… He's Thor, you know? What can actually hurt him?"

"Steve survived being frozen for seventy freakin' years," Darcy mused. "That serum made him damn near invincible." Darcy reflected on her words. Her ass had been planted on the same couch for far too long. Her eyes were burning with exhaustion and looking over at Jane, she was in no better shape."This is ridiculous," she declared. "I haven't showered in two days." She stood up. "Jane, this isn't helping. We're getting all bent out of shape over something we can't control anyway." Grabbing the remote, Darcy flicked the giant TV from the news to some kind of trashy reality TV show.

"I was watching that!" Jane interjected.

"Jane, we can't live like this," Darcy sighed. "Life can't stop every time our guys get called away to save the world. Worrying isn't going to help them do a better job and it's driving us both insane."

Jane gave her a nervous frown. "What if he doesn't come back?" she asked.

Darcy flopped back down onto the couch. "Then I hunt him down and kick his ass all the way back to Asgard, even without a Bifrost." She squeezed Jane's hand. "All joking aside though, he'll come back."

"How can you be sure?"

Darcy shrugged. "Because he's not that stupid," she answered. "I know he has that lost puppy look about him half the time, but he's spent a thousand years learning how to be a King. He knows when it's worth fighting for something and when it's better to retreat. Janey, he's gonna fight for you."

Jane sniffled, clearly overtired and emotional. "Since when did you get so wise?" she asked.

"I was always wise. You were just too busy SCIENCE-ing to realise it."

* * *

It had been a week. Jarvis had been told to inform them if any major news regarding The Avengers broke, but beyond that, Jane and Darcy forced themselves to continue as they had in the years after that incident in New Mexico. Darcy allowed Jane to study data in the lab on the proviso that there were to be no paper cuts and that she remained in Darcy's eyeshot the whole time. Pepper returned from her business trip, the personification of a stiff upper lip. The three of them… they were surviving.

It didn't make the evenings suck any less.

Darcy had gotten used to having her own personal space heater. Steve's presence in her life made her heart swell more than she could express in words. She could admit it… she was lonely. Tugging Steve's robe around her more tightly, she settled down on the couch for yet another night of terrible television watching.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when the door to her apartment swung open with a loud thud.

"Jane! Are you trying to kill me?" Darcy demanded as she whirled around, jumping up to stand, eyes searching the room for a makeshift weapon. Her tirade caught in her throat… There he was, in all his filthy, unshaven glory.

There was a way this was probably supposed to go. Perhaps she was supposed to gasp his name and throw herself into his arms and cry and be all kinds of melodramatic. She didn't want to get this wrong, but she didn't know what was right, either. She stayed rooted to the spot, deliberating what her next move would be.

"Hey Sweetheart," he greeted her, the weariness of over a week in battle radiating off him in waves.

"Don't you have debriefing and stuff to do?" She stuttered, fidgeting with the tie of the robe. Why was she so suddenly socially stunted? "Not that I don't want you here or anything…I just didn't expect you back yet," she looked up at the roof. "Jarvis, you're letting me down, dude!"

"Stark told them where they could go shove their paperwork," Steve replied, crossing the room and pulling her into his embrace. "I told Jarvis not mention I was back in the building. Figured that I'd surprise you."

Darcy gratefully melted against him, her arms coming to rest around his waist. "Consider me surprised," she informed him. This was them, she reminded herself. They worked best when they acted on instinct and stopped trying to predict the other. "You okay?" she asked, head comfortably nestled against his shoulder.

"Few bumps and bruises," he replied. "Nothing a good night's sleep on an actual bed can't fix." His hand came up and tangled with the loose waves of her hair. "Clint cracked a few ribs. He'll be out of commission for a while."

"Okay," Darcy replied, the ache in her chest gone. She felt lighter than she had in days. She braced his face with her hands, pressing a kiss to his lips. "Babe, I'm telling you this because I care about you," she warned him.

"What's up?"

Darcy wrinkled her nose. "You stink."

* * *

Once she'd shoved Steve off to her bathroom to scrub off over a week's worth of explosion and crap off him, Darcy had made a beeline to her kitchenette. She was certainly her grandmother's little protégé… She treated any unknown social situation with food.

She didn't know if there were special social mores that you followed when your boyfriend came back from kicking bad guys ass, so she was left with no choice but to follow her gut. Darcy doubted that they'd had any kind of regular meals when they were out in the thick of battle and she was also intimately acquainted with just how much food Steve could shovel down in one sitting, so she opened up the refrigerator and got to work. Her teenage years spent working in a deli hadn't gone to waste and she cranked up her well-loved Panini press before she loaded two ciabatta loaves with every cold meat and pickled vegetable she had in her possession, before layering on an unhealthy amount of cheese.

"Something smells good," Steve said quietly. Darcy turned to face him. His hair damp and face clean shaven, clad in a pair of sweatpants and a worn tee shirt, he looked much more like the Steve that she knew than the battle-exhausted soldier who had walked through her door.

Darcy gave him a soft smile, "I figured you'd be starving," she shrugged. "It shouldn't be long."

Steve crossed the room and grabbed Darcy around the waist, pulling her back against his broad chest. "I missed you," he murmured in her ear.

Darcy felt her cheeks flush. Given that he'd grown up in a time where two men couldn't hug without some serious slurring, Darcy had always assumed that getting Steve to admit to any kind of emotion would have been like drawing blood from a stone… She couldn't have been more wrong. He'd been the first one to say the big "I love you", and late one night, when she'd probed him about it, he admitted that he figured that he'd been given a second chance at life and he wasn't going to be wasting any opportunities being scared. "Missed you too," Darcy replied. She turned around and pressed a kiss against his mouth. She nudged his shoulder and nodded towards her mismatched kitchen table and chairs. "Sit down," she ordered him as she moved towards the bench.

She scoffed playfully when she saw the way his eyes lit up when she put the plate in front of him. "Eat up, Soldier," she teased.

"You're the best, Darce," he murmured, grabbing her hand and placing a kiss against her palm.

"Well, you did save the free world, again," Darcy mused, nails scratching against his scalp in the way she knew he liked. "The least I can do is throw together a hot meal when you get back."

"I notice you've taken possession of my dressing gown," Steve mentioned as he ate, watching Darcy flit about the kitchen, putting away clean dishes that had been sitting in her dishwasher for the past week.

Darcy raised an eyebrow at his old fashioned vernacular. "So it seems," she replied coolly, removing her glasses and polishing the lens on the soft terrycloth.

"You planning on returning it?"

"Sure," Darcy responded, sliding her glasses back onto her nose. "On laundry day."

* * *

Darcy had catalogued each of his wounds as she listened to him recount details of what he'd seen on his latest mission, carefully running her fingers over each bruise, watching with fascination as the dark violet marks faded over the course of the evening. He sighed heavily, his fingers tracing up and down her ribcage.

Darcy twisted so that her chin rested in her hand, blue eyes staring up at him inquisitively. "Penny for your thoughts?"

"You'd be getting short-changed," he replied drily. He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. "I'm going to sound like a jerk," he prefaced. "Before, there was never anybody who cared about me," he began.

"I'm sure that's not true," Darcy interjected.

"Just listen," he admonished gently, lightly tapping her on the nose with his index finger. "I was an orphan. It was just Bucky and me. Nobody gave me a second look before the serum and afterwards, nobody gave a shit about Steve Rogers. It was all about Captain America."

Darcy raised an eyebrow at Steve's harsh language, but knew not to interrupt him.

"When I shipped out, there was nobody waving me off on the harbor. And there was nobody to write home to. So when you came up to see me off, it reminded me that everything is different now. No matter how much I wanted to give up, no matter how overwhelming the odds, I had my girl waiting at home for me and I couldn't give up, because I had to get back to her."

"That doesn't make you a jerk," Darcy told him. She chewed on her bottom lip, wondering how on earth she was going to follow that confession up. "None of this has ever been personal for me," she murmured. "All the other crap that I've ended up tangled in was all because of Jane and her connection to Thor." She wasn't a crier. She _wasn't._ She drew a shaky little breath and continued. "So when you got dragged into this, it was scary in a way it never has been before. So I acted like a pathetic teenage girl," her cheeks coloured. "I stole your robe because it was yours, and I wanted to have something that was yours, even when you weren't around."

"You're not a pathetic teenage girl," Steve assured her. "Sit up," he requested. "And close your eyes."

Darcy gave him a curious look, but obediently did as she was told.

Steve removed the chain from around his neck. He'd been wearing it for the last seventy years. It was time he stopped.

Darcy jumped when she felt the weight of the metal drop against her breastbone, the chain still warm from Steve's skin. "There," he whispered, hand cupping her cheek. "So you always have something of mine."

Darcy smiled, her thumb tracing the embossed print of his name on the dog tag. "Rogers, Steven G," she read aloud.

"I've had those since I enlisted," He told her.

Darcy froze, mentally debating whether or not she should even be wearing them. She knew what those tags would mean to a historian, but more than that, she knew how few of Steve's possessions had survived his time on ice. "Are you sure…"

"Completely," he replied. "They were an anchor for me when I was just the pretty boy the brass wanted to use to raise morale. They reminded me of why I agreed to the damn procedure in the first place. Erskine insisted that I was a good man, and I had to live up to his expectations of me, so his sacrifice wasn't in vain. I wanted to stand up to bullies and fight against just how unfair the world is."

"Now, how am I supposed to be selfish and remind you not to be a hero next time you get called on when you go and say things like that?" Darcy asked. "Sometimes I think you're too good to be real."

"Don't, Darce," He warned her, his tone darkening. "Don't put me on that pedestal. Not you, too."

Darcy leaned forward to plant a soft kiss on his mouth to silence him. "I don't know what you're talking about," she murmured. "That Captain America guy seems okay, I guess. A little one dimensional and cheesy, but he's the Star Spangled Man With A Plan." She paused, giving him a cheesecake-y grin, like the Elvgren girls that used to be painted onto the side of warplanes. "He's a symbol. Someone for the masses to rally behind and feel like they're the good guys," she poked his chest. "I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about Steve Rogers. The guy who still insists on pulling out my chair for me, but has agreed to let me occasionally pay the bill even though it goes against everything he was taught do when it comes to treating a lady. The guy who genuinely cares to hear an answer when he asks how you are," She studied his face, wondering if her point was finally hammering home. "I don't give a shit about the paragon of American virtue. I'm in love with the idealistic kid from Brooklyn who doesn't like bullies and tells them where to go. That's the guy who is too good to be real." Her hand closed around the dog tags, silently daring him to challenge her.

Steve should have known better. For as long as he'd known Darcy, she'd treated him with the same snarky wit that she treated anybody who lived in Avengers Tower. She was genuinely unperturbed by spending her days in the presence of a Norse god or a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. Instead, she asked blatantly inappropriate questions about what it was like wearing the superhero uniform when you had to go to the bathroom and silently passed over hot chocolate when she saw that one of her compatriots were in a dark place. He shouldn't have doubted her ability to separate the man from the mask. He fingered the chain. "They look good on you."

"I'm glad," Darcy replied, a cheeky grin creeping across her face. "Because you're never getting them back now."

"You volunteering to be my anchor?" He asked, leaning forward to softly kiss her full lips.

She smiled against his mouth. "I can do that."

* * *

**Thoughts? You know, if any?**


End file.
